Tuesday 20 November 2012

The Brown Hare

Long term readers of my blog will know of my attachment to the brown hare.   It is by far my favourite wild animal and I have spent the last few years collecting images - card, statuettes etc.   Every time I get enough cards I put them into a clip frame and the poor old farmer has to knock another nail into the wall of the utility room.
A new clip frame has arrived this week and I have enough cards to fill it.
I already have one large life-sized statue of a hare and today a new one has arrived - courtesy of the farmer - as my early Christmas present.
I always say that some images have 'hare-ness' and some do not, but this statuette (as you will see from the photograph) definitely has it in spades.
I have always loved the hare.   Lincolnshire, which is where I was born, is a fenland county and typical hare country.   They were familiar animals when I was a child and I have always loved them.  Less familiar now, because they have been persecuted and also the structure of farming has changed and not in their favour.   My mother's favourite meal was jugged hare, but we will draw a veil over that - sufficient to say that I never ever tasted it and even the smell of it cooking made me feel ill.
Hares are surrounded by magic.   The goddess Freya had a hare as her familiar and the animal is steeped in folklore.   They never go under ground, as rabbits do, but birth and rear their young, mainly in furrows of ploughed fields. 
It is said that they sleep with their eyes open and that they dance to the music of time.   In Spring the males box and I have often seen this happen here in the Dales from my bedroom window, as the field opposite seems to attract them in Spring.
I hope you love my new hare as much as I do.  I keep going into the room to admire him.

16 comments:

Elizabeth said...

A gorgeous hare!
Such verve and springiness.
I also love rabbits.
My father loved jugged hare.....Hm....could not bear even to think of it.

John Going Gently said...

handsome pat!

angryparsnip said...


What a wonderful early Christmas gift.
It is a beautiful statue.
I too love rabbits and hares.

cheers, parsnip

Heather said...

Oh I do! A very worthy object of your affections. I too love hares and am collecting images of them for a project, if I can muster the skill to bring it to fruition.
At the back of our previous home was a paddock in which hares boxed in spring and bred. One day our soft old labrador found a leveret which screamed at him. He just wagged his tail and barked until we arrived to see what all the fuss was about. I was thrilled to think that we had a hare form on our little field.

Rachel Phillips said...

We love hares. We have them here on our farm. Turn left at The Wash.

Gwil W said...

I went to Lincs years ago in search of Kit Williams' golden hare of Masquerade but needless to say I was barking up the wrong street. It was in Beds.

Tom Stephenson said...

I DO love your hare, Weave. It is lovely, and I would be happy to have it in my home too.

MorningAJ said...

He's lovely! I have a few myself around the house. I'd never eat one. You never know if it might be a relative! :)

Em Parkinson said...

He's beautiful. Fluid and I would love to have him too - what a great present.

Gerry Snape said...

Gorgeous! love the hares!

ArtPropelled said...

He's lovely! I wouldn't be able to eat jugged hair either.

The Weaver of Grass said...

So glad you all like my hare - later today I intend to mount the cards I have on the latest clip frame. If i get them done I will add a photo of them too. Christmas cake 1 to bake first though.

Arija said...

I too love them and watch their population wax and wane over the years. Since the population of kangaroos has escalated to plague proportions, I hardly see hares any more. I do hope they survive and breed up again.

Golden West said...

A wonderful gift!

megan blogs said...

He is lovely!

Crafty Green Poet said...

what a lovely hare!

I have very rarely seen hares, though my most memorable sighting was at the Ring of Brodgar one of the old stone circles on Orkney, now that was a magical moment